Moving from Seattle’s pitcher-friendly ballpark Safeco Field to Fenway Park has revitalized Beltre offensively. The third baseman, now 31, has a .374 on-base percentage and .574 slugging percentage, his best numbers since he left the Dodgers. I’m not sure ballpark adjustments entirely account for his improvement from .304/.379 with the Mariners last season.

In six career games against the Dodgers, Beltre is 8 for 24 with two doubles, a homer, three walks and one strikeout. Beltre was 3 for 21 with three walks and a homer for the Dodgers against Boston.

Drew, 34, has declined so far this year, his OPS falling from .914 in 2009 to .807 while starting 60 of 68 games in right field. This weekend marks the first time he faces the Dodgers since opting out of his contract. Something tells me that Drew would get booed if he ever returned in a visiting uniform to Dodger Stadium, a shame considering his .905 OPS for Los Angeles.

* * *

Carlos Monasterios won’t be the least experienced starting pitcher in Fenway Park tonight. Fellow Venezuelan Felix Doubront, 22, is making his first major-league start. The lefthander’s ERA with AAA Pawtucket was 1.08, though he never reached the six-inning mark in any of his four starts. He struck out 16 in 16 2/3 innings against 22 baserunners. For AA Portland, Doubront had a 2.51 ERA in 43 innings spread over eight starts.

From the Dodger press notes: “Monasterios has now outlasted all Rule 5 draft picks for the Dodgers other than D.J. Houlton (2005). Since 1981, the Dodgers have drafted just nine players in the Rule 5 draft and only four made the Opening Day roster – Houlton, Monasterios, Frank Lankford (1998) and Jose Antonio Nunez (2001). Both Lankford and Nunez were returned to their previous teams in May. Houlton stayed on the roster all season.”

Nick Green has signed a minor-league contract with Toronto, according to the team (via MLB Trade Rumors).

A barnburner in Albuquerque on Thursday, with the Isotopes falling, 15-12 in 11 innings after rallying from an eight-run deficit. Claudio Vargas pitched an effective three innings in his return to the Dodger organization, but then the roof caved in on Cody White, who allowed 10 runs in four innings. Lucas May had a single, double and one of four Albuquerque home runs, raising his OPS to .830. Russ Mitchell hit his fourth homer in his past four games.

Kyle Russell doubled but also wore the platinum sombrero in Chatanooga’s 14-2 win. Russell has struck out 19 times in 36 AA at-bats. Dee Gordon reached base four times for the Lookouts, raising his OPS to .951 in his past 10 games. Kenley Jansen continues his fast track up the Dodger system since he converted to relief pitching from catching; he has 24 strikeouts and a 1.17 ERA against 18 baserunners in 15 1/3 AA innings.

Gary A. Vasquez/US Presswire
Manny Ramirez has a .430 on-base percentage and .585 slugging percentage as a Dodger. His OPS with the team is higher than it was with the Red Sox.

Think back to what the expectations were that summer day in 2008 when the Los Angeles Dodgers acquired Manny Ramirez. Think back to the fears.

That’s the standard Ramirez had to meet to be a success. And by that standard, that’s exactly what Ramirez has been.

As Ramirez was leaving the Boston Red Sox, the shout could be heard from coast to coast: “GOOD RIDDANCE!” He was 36 years old, objectively past his athletic prime and subjectively a cancer. For a Dodgers team saddled with its own nightmare in Andruw Jones (without the benefit of that nightmare having led the team to any World Series titles just a few years before), for a Dodgers team spinning its wheels with a 54-54 record, Ramirez was a calculated risk, potentially a waste of time and potentially a disaster. But instead of relying on the sub-.700 OPS Juan Pierre and Delwyn Young to fill out their outfield, the Dodgers gave up their third baseman of the future, Andy LaRoche, and first-round draft choice Bryan Morris, in the hopes that Ramirez would provide a jolt and not an electrocution.

That trade, in and of itself, can only be seen right now as a complete success. A spectacular one. Ramirez put together one of the most pyrotechnic hitting performances in Dodger history – an on-base percentage of .489 and slugging percentage of .743, 17 homers in 53 games – to lead the Dodgers to the National League Championship Series for the first time in 20 years. LaRoche, endorsed in this space repeatedly as the real deal, has fallen into a utility role with the struggling Pittsburgh Pirates at age 26, while the 23-year-old Morris is in the minors trying to come back from arm trouble. Both are young enough to change the scorecard, but I’m not sure anyone’s expecting the scales of that trade ever to be balanced.

If Ramirez’s accomplishments then seem tainted by his 2009 suspension now, the stain would only be darker on the Red Sox’s titles.

Then came the 2008-09 offseason, with the Dodgers talking Ramirez agent Scott Boras down from his histrionic expectation of a six-year megadeal – a request blindly endorsed by many in the media – to a two-year contract (including Ramirez’s option for the second year). Through May 6, 2009, the performance remained stratospheric: Ramirez on-based .492 and slugged .641. Then came his 50-game suspension.

That Ramirez broke the rules was distasteful. That he missed 50-plus games in his age-37 season is simply something anyone could see was possible. It was part of the risk; it was part of the reason that Ramirez and Boras got a contract that was only a third as long as they wanted. The May suspension and then a July hand injury accelerated Ramirez’s decline. The out-of-this-world player from late 2008 had left this world in 2009. By Ramirez standards, he was down.

Funny thing, though. By Dodger standards, he was still nothing less than great. For the year, Ramirez had a .418 on-base percentage and .531 slugging percentage in 104 games. His adjusted OPS of 155 was the highest by a Dodger (minimum 100 games) since Adrian Beltre in 2004.

Because Juan Pierre played above his own head for the month of May and pieces of April and August, Ramirez was considered a flop. Countless wanted him benched, claiming Pierre was the team’s MVP. Yet Ramirez was, quite simply, the better player. (His Wins Above Replacement figure of 2.6, according to Fangraphs, was nearly 50 percent higher than Pierre’s 1.8.) Ramirez did more to boost the Dodgers to their second consecutive NLCS appearance. Of course, Pierre gets more respect for his character, but tellingly, you don’t hear Pierre’s name mentioned in Los Angeles anymore, not with his OPS down to .588 this season in Chicago. No one’s busting Frank McCourt’s chops for failing to sign Gandhi and Mother Teresa to multiyear contracts.

This season, Ramirez has been inconsistent. He’s looked feeble in the outfield. He’s also been withdrawn from the media – a fact that seems to matter greatly to the media and not at all to anyone else. And yet, as he heads to Boston for the first time since his acrimonious departure, look where his numbers are: .386 on-base percentage, .517 slugging. Of late he has heated up, with an OPS of nearly 1.000 in June. The Manny Ramirez who will be cascaded with boos this weekend is a Manny Ramirez who is still one of the bigger offensive cogs in baseball.

Amid all the concerns swirling around Dodger ownership today, it’s quaint now to look at Ramirez’s $45 million price tag and debate whether the McCourts were overspending. You can look at the list of 2008-09 free agents and find a better way to spend $45 million – if you look long and hard enough. Mostly, what you’ll find is a host of players who, with a lot less grief, have done noticeably worse than the war-torn Ramirez.

If you compare Ramirez to the player he was in September 2008, if you hold him to a standard so unreasonable only he could have set it, then he’s a disappointment. But if you compare him to the player he was in July 2008, the player many people reasonably feared he might become in 2009 and 2010 – in other words, if you make a sane comparison – he still looks rather remarkable. Ramirez has few to blame but himself for becoming a fan and media pinata, but those smashing might pause for a moment to note all the candy that has been pouring out of it.

The Dodgers have never played a World Series Game 7 in my lifetime, but Game 7 of the 1984 NBA Finals between the Lakers and Celtics came during my heyday as a Laker fan. And I have no memory of it. It’s bizarre. I remember so much of what led up to that seventh game, but the game itself jogs nothing in my brain. Basically, when I think of the 1984 Finals, I think of Gerald Henderson’s steal. For all that went on, that tells the story.

So maybe tonight’s won’t be a game for the ages, for me, anyway. When I think of the 2010 NBA playoffs, maybe I’ll be more likely to think of Ron Artest’s put-back against Phoenix than anything else.

Maybe.

The push and pull of this series has revved me up. I went to Game 2 of the NBA finals and left in defeat but with relative piece of mind, believing that the Lakers would have no trouble regaining home-court advantage by winning one of three games in Boston. And so they did, in their next opportunity.

But by the time Game 5 came, I was dying as Boston made shot after shot. With Game 6, the turnaround by the Lakers brought back the passion of my days as a no-holds-barred Laker fan — not so long ago, really.

I’m not as hardcore as I once was. Almost nothing in the NBA regular season affects me anymore, and if the Lakers had bowed out in earlier playoff rounds this year, I would have been disappointed but similarly composed.

But tonight, I’m back. It’s not a matter of being a fair-weather fan, because the Lakers’ nearly bottomless pit of fair weather this year has mostly anesthetized me. It’s this all-stakes, live-or-die night that’s done it. I want this. I really want this. I hope it’s one worth remembering.

The New York Times has a story today, anonymously sourced, stating that representatives for Manny Ramirez in 2009 explored seeking an exemption to baseball’s drug policy (link via L.A. Observed).

Around the time Major League Baseball suspended Manny Ramirez for violating its drug program last season, his representatives told officials in the commissioner’s office that they planned to file for permission to use a banned drug that would boost his testosterone levels.

Ramirez’s representatives, including his agent, Scott Boras, decided not to file for the exemption then, but the idea of seeking one was resurrected in September, two months after Ramirez returned to the field, though he ultimately never received one.

The second time the idea came up, the Dodgers were in a close race in the National League West and Ramirez was struggling at the plate. In that instance, high-ranking Dodgers personnel, including General Manager Ned Colletti, discussed how they could help Ramirez and whether he had enough of a medical problem to obtain an exemption for a testosterone-boosting drug.

Baseball’s independent drug-testing administrator granted 115 exemptions last season to players who proved a medical need to use a banned substance. All but seven of the players received a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder. Two players received exemptions for drugs to boost their testosterone levels.

The accounts of the discussions about Ramirez’s obtaining an exemption were based on interviews with three people in baseball who spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing medical and drug testing matters.

A spokesman for the Dodgers, Josh Rawitch, said team officials did not look into getting Ramirez an exemption. He declined further comment. …

That wasn’t an earthquake you just felt in Southern California, that was the thud of Dodger fans leaping off Ely’s bandwagon. But Southern Californians tend to overreact to the slightest rumble in their sports universe. (Get your psyches retrofitted for tonight’s Lakers game, just in case.)

Back when things were going well for Ely, all of two weeks ago, we all knew he eventually would have some subpar performances, so I don’t know why there should be any surprise that it has happened. A quick look around the comments sections of various sites and Twitter already shows some fans not only disappointed, but giving up on Ely as quickly as they fell in love with him. If it weren’t for Chad Billingsley’s injury, it appears that some of them would expect Ely be sent back to Albuquerque tonight.

It almost never fails to stun me that even the most experienced baseball fans expect players to deliver the same level of performance every time out. A pitcher whose ERA is around 4.00 isn’t going to allow four runs each and every nine innings. Ups and downs are a fundamental part of this game. Yet somehow, a good player is always supposed to be good — if he’s not good, he must be bad.

What I think happens is this: There’s an insatiable rush to judgment. So many fans are determined to know, to draw conclusions. “Wait and see” is not a comfortable place for people to be. It’s easier for a lot of people to give up on a player, or at the very least drop their expectations down to nothing, than to simply ride out his struggles.

As excited as I was about John Ely during his hot streak, his future remained a mystery. No big deal: I watch the games like I turned the pages of Agatha Christie novels as a kid — to see what happens next. A guess at the future doesn’t change the text on the next page. Now that Ely is slumping, I can say, “That’s too bad.” But there’s a difference between saying “That’s too bad” and “He’s a fraud.”

My point is, we learned very little about John Ely today. He gave up three home runs in a place where home runs are frequently given up. We always knew that was possible — there’s no news there. Much more relevant will be what John Ely might have learned about John Ely today. It might well be that this is the beginning of the end of Ely’s young career, that he has fooled all the people he can fool, but much more likely is that it is one of many twists in a windy road. For all we might think we see at the horizon, we don’t know yet what’s going to be coming around each and every turn. We just know the turns will be there.

No details yet, but the Dodgers announced in a 7:30 a.m. e-mail that Rafael Furcal had been placed on Major League Baseball’s bereveament list. Chin-Lung Hu has been called up to take his roster spot, though he will not arrive in Cincinnati in time for the start of today’s early game.

Claudio Vargas returned to the Dodger organization, signing a minor-league contract with the Isotopes, whose pitching has been trashed by injuries, absences, promotions and demotions.

Russ Mitchell homered twice and singled for Albuquerque on Wednesday, while Michael Restovich doubled, tripled and homered, and Xavier Paul and Ivan De Jesus, Jr. also each had three hits.

Kyle Russell hit his first AA home run for Chattanooga, while Trayvon Robinson had three hits.

Fred Claire has a nice story at MLB.com about Monte Irvin, who at age 91 will have his number retired by the Giants. Among other tidbits was this revelation:

… Irvin revealed that when he got out of the service in 1945 he signed a contract with the Dodgers.

“I had been selected by Branch Rickey to break the color barrier,” said Irvin. “I had the talent and I was easy to get along with.”

Irvin said that even though he had signed the contract with the Dodgers, he asked to return to play in the Negro Leagues “because I didn’t want to go to the Major Leagues until I had my game back after three years in the service.”

Irvin said a dispute developed over the contract between his Negro League team and the Dodgers, and he didn’t get his opportunity in the Major Leagues until a deal was worked out with the Giants in 1949.

“Things have a way of working out and I’m just happy that I had the chance to play the game that I loved,” he said.

Clayton Kershaw didn’t walk anyone in the first inning. Or the second, the third, the fourth or the fifth.

In the bottom of the sixth, the first moment he pitched when the game wasn’t close, he walked the leadoff batter.

Pitching is such a mystery, isn’t it? And so is baseball, for that matter.

For a game the Dodgers just about ran away with and eventually won, 6-2, there were more than a few tense moments. The Dodgers would get up, but never too far up. They’d be in peril, then escape like Bugs Bunny.

The bottom of the eighth might have been most vexing of all. With a 5-1 lead, Joe Torre had Clayton Kershaw bat for himself in the top of the inning despite being past the 100-pitch mark, then removed him from the game following a one-out error by Blake DeWitt. Two relievers and two baserunners later (including a Hong-Chih Kuo walk to load the bases), the Dodgers used a line-drive double play, Rafael Furcal unassisted, to amscray.

In the ninth, with the Dodgers up 6-1, Kuo gave up his first run since April 22 on the first homer he allowed since Game 5 of the 2009 National League Championship Series, before getting the final out on a lunging catch by Matt Kemp, but that was a pocket full of posies compared to what had preceded. And so on a night that Andre Ethier singled twice and hit a three-run homer, that Loney had two more hits to raise his OPS to .810, that Manny Ramirez homered for the third time in seven games, that Kershaw lowered his ERA to 2.96 with 7 1/3 innings of seven-hit, seven-strikeout, one-run and yes, one-mystery-walk pitching, the Dodgers ran away with the victory … and hid. So close to disappointment, instead it’s two straight victories over the NL Central leaders and, once again, the best record in the National League. They’ll take it.

In the two weeks since throwing four shutout innings that day, Schlichting has made three appearances for AAA Albuquerque, totaling 4 1/3 innings. He has allowed three runs on seven hits and two walks, striking out two.

Al Berhman/AP
The Reds couldn’t stop Rafael Furcal – they could only hope to tag him out trying to steal in the sixth inning.

In the middle of tonight’s game, the Dodgers worried that their three-run first-inning outburst might be washed away by rain. Turns out the team was just getting started.

On a night that Rafael Furcal had five hits, the Dodgers scored nine runs after the tarp was removed at soaked and nearly empty Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, finishing off a 12-0 romp at 12:52 a.m. on the East Coast.

Furcal, who grounded out in the ninth while bidding to tie the Dodger team record of six hits, had four singles and a double, and also dazzled defensively. James Loney (now the team’s RBI leader) added three doubles and a single, giving him seven hits in his past nine at-bats. Left field also had four hits for the Dodgers, with Manny Ramirez homering and singling twice in his second consecutive three-hit game, and Reed Johnson adding a single. The Dodgers had 25 baserunners in all – Ramon Troncoso even had a bases-loaded walk.

According to the Dodger TV broadcast, the last time two Dodgers had at least four hits in a game was when Jeff Kent and Marlon Anderson did it in the 4+1 game on September 18, 2006.

Al Behrman/AP
It was a long night, but Hiroki Kuroda struck out eight in five shutout innings with no walks.

After a rain delay of more than two hours, Hiroki Kuroda came back out to pitch the fifth inning for the Dodgers tonight in Cincinnati.

I have no expertise to be able to discuss if this was a risk or not. All I know is that in my roughly 35 years of following baseball, this kind of thing is almost never done because of the fear it will bring injury to the pitcher. But on the day they announced Chad Billingsley was going on the disabled list, the Dodgers did it.

Here’s what the Dodgers stood to gain:

1) The 23rd win in the United States for Kuroda, who had thrown four one-hit shutout innings while striking out seven.
2) Possibly a better chance of winning tonight’s game, because Kuroda is better than the Dodgers’ middle relievers.
3) A little more rest for the bullpen, which figures to be taxed between now and Sunday.
4) Status as pioneers in the You Can Bring Back Starting Pitchers After Rain Delays Movement.

Here’s what the Dodgers stood to lose:

1) The game, if Kuroda couldn’t regain his effectiveness after the break. He loaded the bases in the bottom of the fifth before getting the final out.
2) The sanity of Dodger fans.
3) Shine off Torre’s reputation.
4) Kuroda.

The Dodgers might have made the right decision. I don’t know. I do know that most people would say it was a bad bet, and I’m curious why they made it.

The Dodgers announced this afternoon that Chad Billingsley would go on the 15-day disabled list with a groin strain. Tony Jackson of ESPNLosAngeles.com has details. I’ll update this post with the news of who is being added to the roster as soon as I hear.

Billingsley was scheduled to start for the Dodgers on Thursday. John Ely could make that start on four days’ rest, with Vicente Padilla then being activated to pitch Friday in Boston. Charlie Haeger, by the way, is scheduled to pitch for Albuquerque tonight.

Kinda amusing to think of what would happen if Padilla and Haeger aren’t ready to go by Saturday. With James McDonald and Scott Elbert out, do we start talking about guys like Seth Etherton? Alberto Bastardo? Or do the Dodgers call up another reliever and give Jeff Weaver a spot start?

The road just got a little rougher.

* * *

In other malady news, another celebration yielded a big injury. UCLA’s No. 3 hitter, Tyler Rahmatulla, broke his wrist in the dogpile celebrating the Bruins’ advance to the College World Series.

* * *

Update: Joe Torre told reporters that Padilla is ready to go and will be activated. Ely starts Thursday, Carlos Monasterios on Friday, Padilla on Saturday and then back to Hiroki Kuroda on Sunday before Monday’s off day. Torre said Padilla is ready to throw 100 pitches.

Billingsley strained his right groin in the last inning of his last start, the Dodgers said. An MRI showed no structural damage. The team wasn’t expecting him to miss any time, but he felt tightness during his latest bullpen workout at the very end on his pushoff leg, and the Dodgers didn’t want that to mess up his mechanics.

RAINY DAY TUESDAY – The National Weather Center is now predicting a strong chance of severe weather (with the potential for tornadic activity) late this afternoon and early evening. If the nasty weather becomes a reality, all credentialed press will be sheltered in the left field level media interview room as the press box and broadcast booths will need to be evacuated.

As this day breaks, the Dodgers find themselves one of three National League West teams within a half-game of the best record in the NL, all of them on pace to win at least 92 games. And Colorado, potentially the best of them all, lurks only three games behind the Dodgers.

That’s quite a pennant race to look forward to. Arguably, the best team in the NL might not be as good on paper as the third- or even fourth-best team in the American League East. But with the fourth-best team in the NBA Eastern Conference putting the hopes of our favored hometown Lakers squad in jeopardy, this seems the wrong week to be dismissive.